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[zwei]

You need to tweak your food production down slightly. With enough small fields (say twelve 2x2 instead of one 6x8) you increase the number of fields you can set to fallow or fertilise to slightly modify production.

Every year your food count increases (excluding trade) set one or more fields to go fallow for one or more seasons - use your discretion. If your food count decreases over a year then build more fields, trade for more, or use fertiliser (in order of increasing Fun). Remember that your growers will naturally increase in skill, so a small deficit can turn into a huge surplus after a few years. Likewise, the death of your legendary+5 grower might mean you need to supplement your food production.

You can also just have special stockpile for finisehd food, booze pile and cooking/brewing supplies pile.

If you manage to fill one of them, it ends up okay if you set up production with surplus:

Full Food stockpile will clutter kitchens, slowing down production. It will not use up additional barrels. And if surplus rots, who cares, as long as your dwarves are well fed.

Full Booze stockpile, ditto. It will consume barrels, but again, clutter to the rescue! Eventually, dwarves consumption speed and clutter level in still will result in even balanced system with no additional barrels needed.

And far as source food: Well, plants will rot. Yawn, you have surplus, it will be okay.

---

Workshop Clutter: One of Best features in game.

[Durin]

You need to tweak your food production down slightly. With enough small fields (say twelve 2x2 instead of one 6x8) you increase the number of fields you can set to fallow or fertilise to slightly modify production.

Every year your food count increases (excluding trade) set one or more fields to go fallow for one or more seasons - use your discretion. If your food count decreases over a year then build more fields, trade for more, or use fertiliser (in order of increasing Fun). Remember that your growers will naturally increase in skill, so a small deficit can turn into a huge surplus after a few years. Likewise, the death of your legendary+5 grower might mean you need to supplement your food production.

You can also just have special stockpile for finisehd food, booze pile and cooking/brewing supplies pile.

If you manage to fill one of them, it ends up okay if you set up production with surplus:

Full Food stockpile will clutter kitchens, slowing down production. It will not use up additional barrels. And if surplus rots, who cares, as long as your dwarves are well fed.

Full Booze stockpile, ditto. It will consume barrels, but again, clutter to the rescue! Eventually, dwarves consumption speed and clutter level in still will result in even balanced system with no additional barrels needed.

And far as source food: Well, plants will rot. Yawn, you have surplus, it will be okay.

---

Workshop Clutter: One of Best features in game.

That is AWESOME.  I did not realize this... how in the world did you work that out?

[Rozenbuddy]

He's obviously Armok in dwarf disguise...

[Neonivek]

I just make an unfathomable amount of barrels and food storage spaces.

I could feed the world! MWAHAHAHAHAAA!!!

[Durin]

I just make an unfathomable amount of barrels and food storage spaces.

I could feed the world! MWAHAHAHAHAAA!!!

Hehe, that was largely my plan of action....  I just kept falling behind on the barrel part.

Hey, if Threetoe is still monitoring this at all for its original purpose, I'd like an option to shut down graphics entirely until some defined announcements take place, if this would tend to make the game go faster.  There are times when I have df going in the background because it's just really nothing but a wait for something to happen I have predetermined, and short of invasion notifications or the like, I just want to fast forward.

[GoldenH]

I just make an unfathomable amount of barrels and food storage spaces.

I could feed the world! MWAHAHAHAHAAA!!!

Hehe, that was largely my plan of action....  I just kept falling behind on the barrel part.

Hey, if Threetoe is still monitoring this at all for its original purpose, I'd like an option to shut down graphics entirely until some defined announcements take place, if this would tend to make the game go faster.  There are times when I have df going in the background because it's just really nothing but a wait for something to happen I have predetermined, and short of invasion notifications or the like, I just want to fast forward.

Unfortunately that won't really help.. setting graphics FPS to 1 in the init file should be essentially the same thing, which doesn't do much of anything.

[Durin]

I just make an unfathomable amount of barrels and food storage spaces.

I could feed the world! MWAHAHAHAHAAA!!!

Hehe, that was largely my plan of action....  I just kept falling behind on the barrel part.

Hey, if Threetoe is still monitoring this at all for its original purpose, I'd like an option to shut down graphics entirely until some defined announcements take place, if this would tend to make the game go faster.  There are times when I have df going in the background because it's just really nothing but a wait for something to happen I have predetermined, and short of invasion notifications or the like, I just want to fast forward.

Unfortunately that won't really help.. setting graphics FPS to 1 in the init file should be essentially the same thing, which doesn't do much of anything.

Hrm. Still calculating paths and flow and such I guess... Thanks for the tip tho.

[Damn It]

Not sure if anyone is still following the original post, but I am a new player who has been turned off. I've logged in countless hours on roguelikes and even won at them once or twice, so I'm not someone who can't handle ASCII, steep learning curves, or death. I played DF extensively for about 2 weeks, but I'm just done with it at this point.

I put up with a lot from DF, because I am so enamored of the idea that I am a part of an organic, evolving world and I feel that I am having an influence on history as a mortal hero. That's awesome. I also really liked the detailed combat/wound mechanics (outside of the imbalances which I'll cover below).

The learning curve is steep mostly because of the interface... it could not be less intuitive. The first time I played, it took me 15 minutes to figure out how to get my dwarves to dig a bloody hole in the ground. Even learning basic tasks in DF was too much to handle. It wasn't easy even with the wiki. After 2 attempts, I gave up on Fortress Mode at first, and switched to Adventurer mode in the hopes that it would be more similar to what I'm used to.

Adventurer mode is great, but unbalanced as hell. It doesn't matter how well developed my character is... any stooge with a bow is capable of taking me out. Starting characters are also too powerful in relation to developed characters. What I mean is, since there are no stores except for human (which only sell shitty iron items in any event), you can't upgrade your equipment to any significant extent unless you built it yourself with an earlier fortress game. Also, with only an hours play time, my characters are able to defeat legendary creatures like giants, who were around since the beginning of time and might have 15 kills to their credit. That shouldn't happen. The top melee creatures should be much tougher to beat, and a typical archer should not be so difficult. I would weaken bows a little, lower the starting character talents a bit, and have more powerful weapons/items readily available in stores.

Oh, and blundering around towns looking for stuff is excruciating. Make the towns smaller!

Anyway, after learning the mechanics of adventuring I tried fortress mode again and did quite well. I then found that the game is too easy once you know how to play. Once my fortress had external defensive walls, fortifications, traps, and a population of about 50 dwarves, I never felt like I was in any danger at all from external threats.

Attackers should be more numerous and more direct. The vast majority of enemy encounters were thieves and ambushers... I'd have liked more sieges with higher numbers of troops. I don't agree with the previously mentioned ideas of weakening traps or adding wall destroyers unless the dwarven AI is also improved, because traps/walls are a known quantity and you can never be sure what your military is going to give you. Do your archers have 25 bolts or only 1? Are your melee troops where they're supposed to be?

Once my fortress population reached a certain point, all of the micromanagement bored me to tears. The last 6-7 hours of my fortress time were spent killing off hammerers (who by the way, killed more of my dwarves than the goblins did), building 850,000 barrels, getting annoyed at the whole concept of nobles, and building new bedrooms to hold migrants. I'd have liked the chance to send an assault force against the goblin or kobold civ. Something.

So after about 5 years I abandoned the fortress and started playing another adventurer. An hour later,  I got the Nemesis Unit Load fail error. That was the deal breaker for me. For a game which offers as much as DF, I can learn complicated rules and a weird interface. I can tolerate imbalance. I can work around annoying things like nobles (I had planned to reduce my max pop to 50), but I can't deal with game destroying bugs. In a game as immersive as this, where a main part of play is the evolution of your region, nothing sucks the joy out of you like having everything suddenly get destroyed by a bug. As soon as I read that nothing could be done to restore my game and that the bug was not that uncommon, I erased DF from my machine and likely won't touch it again for several years - if I ever come back at all. Whatever other changes get made to DF, bugs like that have got to be eradicated. Roguelikes have steep learning curves and ASCII graphics, too... but all of the ones I've played are reliable.

I'd make bug resolutions the top priority, then fix the interface, then add the ability to perform routine tasks, (like cooking and brewing) automatically, and finally work on the dwarven AI. Most people will put in the necessary work to overcome anything else, because the game concept is one of the best I've ever seen.

Just my two cents... well, more like 200 cents with the length of this post :-/

[Footkerchief]

Couple comments:

You can sometimes find high-quality iron plate in shops and on town rulers.  Not reliably, but if you raid a couple towns' armor and weapon shops, you'll get some good gear, good enough that you won't have to worry as much about archers (who you shouldn't confront head-on in any case, (S)neaking around is the way to go).

Projectiles won't be nearly as ridiculous in the next version (due out in a month or so).  They'll still kill you sometimes, but they won't destroy every organ in your chest at once.

Sieges are getting a massive overhaul soon after the upcoming release, with an emphasis on increased difficulty and smarter, meaner tactics -- that's one of the shortlisted goals, along with fleshing out Adventure Mode and working through the top 10 suggestions.  The ability to "send an assault force" against enemies should follow soon after those -- you can read about near-future development here.

The Nemesis Unit Load error is horrible, yeah.  It's definitely the worst unfixed bug in DF, and is uniquely hard to track down because nobody has ever been able to catch it happening (your world files get mysteriously erased and THEN you get the crash a couple hours later, with no way to identify the cause of the erasure).  For what it's worth, you could have used autosave/autobackup to recover from this bug by copying over the missing files from the backup to the trashed save, if you had enabled it ahead of time.  Doesn't help now, I know.

[Neruz]

Yeah; the Nemesis bug is a real nasty piece of work, worthy of it's name in fact. It's nigh-impossible to track down or even reliably replicate (There are certain things that, if you do them, will increase the liklihood of it occuring, but it's entirely possible for you to do them and be absolutely fine.) It's like DF's version of cancer; it comes out of nowhere, is nearly impossible to get rid of and cannot be ascribed to any solid origin point. It never strikes the same way twice, and while not all that uncommon (i've never had it, but plenty of other people have) it's just uncommon enough to be nigh-impossible to find usable correlations between instances.


Basically; it's exactly what it says on the tin; Dwarf Fortress's Nemesis, and it's a good Nemesis too; it knows exactly when and where to strike for maximum effect, and then slip away before anyone can track it down.

[LeoLeonardoIII]

Should just call it Armok.

[Lemunde]

The problem with alcohol and some objects (like Bolts) is that they are used up SOOO FAST and require constant diligence to restocking.

Power cranking food and booze is a constant battle.  If you grow food too rapidly, the spare barrels get filled up with food as the dwarves drink them dry, then there is no space to make more booze....

True, I ran into that problem a while back. Took me a while to even realise where all my barrels were disappearing to.

What I do is make separate stockpiles for my booze and food.  When the food stockpile is full they will stop putting food in new barrels and the same goes for the booze.

What would help is a feature where you can set an order to keep producing stuff but only while there is room in a stockpile.  This would keep me from constantly having to put in new orders for booze and such.

[Rozenbuddy]

The void of many concepts that will be made in time, though I grow impatient and therefor must resort to other games for entertainment, possibly to return at a later date. Though I still play now, it will not be long before my boredom has overcome me.

[Knez]

I've been playing DF for about a month now and the 1. problem for me is that this game hates me. Most new games now give you a reward for successfully zooming in and out; DF punishes you for every single mistake and laughs in your face: "You forgot about water pressure didn't you moron? Haha, you dwarfs can't swim and they never will. Good luck making a new fort with you plant gatherer and paraplegic hunter, bitch."

The interface looks pretty old. I'm sure it worked great when the game had 5 workshops and 6 types of stone, but now it needs an overhaul. I want my mason's stone storage to automatically not have ores included, I want my booze stockpile to reserve some barrels (I'm not talking about min/max, I want DF to not give barrels to anyone else, even if booze doesn't need them right now), more consistency with hotkeys (Statues, coffins have different create-place keys)...

The dwarf psyche is beyond words, it's probably that same music going on and on and on. There are so few things to directly affect it. Right now there are parties (no control), statue gardens, pets (can't assign owners) and a few more things. I would like some leisure rooms (public bath, concert hall, library, whatever), tax cuts, prize giveaways or something to help them remain sane more directly.

Why is the game punishing me with nobles? I give the dwarfs food, bedrooms and pets, even though there's more and more of them. And in return I get pompous assholes that make pointless demands and use up workshop hours with their unskilled labor. A good book-keeper let's me see detailed stock; a good manager should maintain the stock I designate (like 200 booze, a legendary manager could break it down to 50 beer, 50 wine and 100 jack daniels) and make the cooks, brewers, farmers as automated as the butchers/tanners; a good broker would automatically trade  non-melt-able narrow items and crafts for cheese and spears, and filter out large pieces of armor; the Hammerer should punish criminals, not ruthlessly murder dwarves and send them into manic depression... Nobles could therefore be split into assholes and management.

For future development I suggest the devs focus on optimizing old features before adding new ones. Cows can't be milked; soap can't be used; workers are stronger and tougher than soldiers, no (work) animals can haul...

Also the game has very little replay-ability(?), should have more "new game +" features and keep players interested. You got a fortress with 500 dwarves? - you can start with 8 folks from now on. You survived for 10 years in freezing/scorching climate? - you get the option do adjust the overall temperature in world creator. You killed 50 elf caravans? - you get to adjust the elf population in world creator... This would also allow goal-oriented scenarios (export over 9000 ores, provide X power to your dwarf kingdom, secure an outpost in hostile territory) or playing in challenge mode (like the ones on DFwiki).

Don't worry about tutorials: there are forums, the wiki, you tube (Thank you whoever made DemonButter). Don't worry about graphics, just let the modders do their thing (I'm sure that's how most FPSs and RPGs remain popular).

And please don't focus on adding new things right now, no point in having any more trade-only items or micro-management intensive workshops.

[Asmodeous]

I've been playing DF for about a month now and the 1. problem for me is that this game hates me. Most new games now give you a reward for successfully zooming in and out; DF punishes you for every single mistake and laughs in your face: "You forgot about water pressure didn't you moron? Haha, you dwarfs can't swim and they never will. Good luck making a new fort with you plant gatherer and paraplegic hunter, bitch."

Funny, this is the #1 reason I can't stop playing the game.